Lets see what you can do with an IPN, Remobo and how to set it all up.

Remobo allows you to:

Control your own computer remotely from any other computer.

Access your files securely from work or while traveling.

Share files, photos and media with friends & family on your network.

Secure all your messages and file transfers against hackers.

Create a virtual private network (VPN) instantly and securely.

Play LAN games over the internet as if you were all in the same place.

Connect to any computer in your list securely to access files and data.

Run virtually any 3rd party application on top of Remobo.

Quite a handful isn’t it? Lets set it all up!

Download and Install

Simply download and install. It will try to install a BitTorrent client (which will be required later as you will see) so if you already have your own, you can say no to this. While setting up the virtual network driver Windows will warn you. Click ‘continue’ and you should be good to go.

Set up an account

Set up a Remobo account. Simple and easy, no fuss. Requires an email address.

Add buddies

When Remobo starts, it asks you for the account details you just set up. Log in and then click on the button labelled “Menu” and then add one of your buddies on the Remobo network. You would have to enter the username of your buddy and your buddy will have to approve your request. This is unlike Hamachi where you create a network where others can join.

Remobo actually supports more than one PC per account, so you can have multiple entries under one buddy. This simply translates to the various computers of your buddy that you can access. This also means that you can use the same account on more than one computer. So you can have your work and home PC listed under the same username.

Let’s MakeUseOf Remobo

This little menu is all you have to take note of for being a Remobo King!

Send files

Files are sent using BitTorrent. Click on “Send a File” and you will be presented with an option to choose the files and folders to share, choose them and specify if you want to share this one time only or keep it shared for longer. Remobo will now automagically create a torrent and send the torrent file to the other side (to the buddy). The other side can then download the torrent file and use any BitTorrent client to download the file. This increases in significance if you are sharing a file with a group!

View Shared files

Clicking on “View Shared Files” will open up a webpage that allows you to view all the shared files (yours and others’) and also allows you to browse the files categorized by usernames so that you know who is sharing which file..

Windows File Sharing

Don’t want to use Bittorrent for some reason? Well no problem you can try “Windows File Sharing” just as you would do on a LAN. Just that it is a lot more simple here. When I clicked on it I was hoping to go through a messy workgroup setup and complicated network settings, but what did I see? I saw the shared printer and shared docs (in other words, it’s already done and I did nothing). Yes that’s how simple it is. Depending upon your situation you may be prompted for a password or do some minor configurations here.

Play games, Stream Media

Basically you can run any 3rd party application atop of Remobo. Want to play any game with your buddy just like you would have played it on the LAN? Easy, hover your mouse over the buddy name and get the IP. This is the virtual IP or the Remobo IP. Use this for streaming media configuration or playing games over the network.

Control Computer from other computers

Click one of the computer names that you want to access. Choose “Remote Control” from the menu that shows up. Enter your buddy’s password and you’ll get remote access to that computer. The whole password situation used for Remote Control bothers me a bit. While this is fine if you are in a work/home scenario, this might not be a good idea in the “buddy” scenario as the Remobo password and the Remote Control password are the same. So if you know someone’s remote control password, you know their account password. Kinda lame?

Chat

I am not going to tell you how you can chat with Remobo. This is just for you to know, that you can chat as well!

Secure Connections

All the connections are secure and encrypted so your data is secure!

Domain Names

Don’t like remembering IP addresses? Well just use <username>.remobo.com and you don’t need to remember any IP address. In case of multiple computer setups use <username>.<computername>.remobo.com

Community

There is a great Remobo community over there. You can make feature requests, get skins, discuss problems and see how others are using Remobo.

All in all a great application. There is the password issue that I mentioned and some dialogs that I feel are redundant, but overall it greatly simplifies the whole process or sharing files, using BitTorrent to send files, VPN setup and Remote Desktop.

It’s still in beta and I am sure it will mature as it grows. If you thought Hamachi was easy and feature rich (or otherwise) try Remobo, you’ll have no idea!

Let us know what you think about it. Have you tried it? Or do you plan to stick with Hamachi or some other application?

(By) Varun Kashyap, who is getting absent minded and forget to mention his name in the last two articles. And before he forgets, he would like to invite you to his TechCrazy Blog, where he writes about latest on the web, tech tips, tweaks and hacks.

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BlackZero

January 14, 2010 at 1:21 pm

salam & Hello Every One.
This is Tanveer Ahmed Khan from Pakistan.
@bill: i have used team viewer alot but for playing games its nt working for me, infact today i was searching for any other way for playing games via Internet with a budy; like we play on lan and i found this Remobo thing.. i hope this thing will work.
I Appreciate and thanks Remobo Team for creating this software and making the communication that easy.
Best regards,
Tanveer Ahmed Khanblack.z3ro@live.com

There is another free software application out there called teamviewer just as an FYI. It is more of a remote support tool, but you can also do file sharing between computers. It also allows multiple users to connect to a single computer at once to do presentations. Great software, check it out http://www.teamviewer.com

As a member of the Remobo team, I can assure you that none of the Remobo team members has anything to do with Hamachi. Period.

The Remobo team does contribute to the creation of the wikipedia page for Remobo, but the tone of the page is quite neutral. And anyone can report & change the pages if they think it violates the spirit of wikepida.

On the surface, both Remobo and Hamachi provides VPN functionality, but that's where the similarity ends. In fact, VPN is the only thing Hamachi provides for end users. Remobo is more than just plain VPN:

1) The network connections in Remobo are created at USER level rather than at machine level, so users can be mobile and create instant network connections anywhere they are logged in. Hamachi does NOT have the concept of "mobile user".

2) The Virtual IP address assigned for Remobo machine is dynamic and not tied to a specific machine or user. A dynamice DNS service of "{machineID}.{userID}.remobo.com" is provided globally for Virtual IP lookup. Hamachi is static IP only and does NOT provide DNS service at all.

3) As Varun wrote in this blog, Remobo comes with a number of built-in applications that make the life of VPN users much easier & enjoyable. Hamachi has NONE of these applications.

Hamachi is a good VPN software, but it is still a long way to go before Consumer on the Internet can protect their privacy on their own & enjoy the freedom of secure communications via well-known technologies like VPN. And this is what drives us to create Remobo from scratch.

Thanks for the great how-to! I'm part of the Remobo team and its encouraging to read an article like this :-) Also, we have just released a new version that fixes lots of bugs and deals with the Remote Control password issue as brought up in this and other blogs.

Although you have only just introduced me to Remobo, I already see a ton of uses and have many ideas. Forget LogMeIn... and maybe even Hamachi! I like how the applications are integrated and easy to add. Thanks for another awesome post!

One minor note: I think it should be "computername.username.remobo.com", not "username.computername.remobo.com" under the "Domain Names" section... (according to http://www.remobo.com/howto.php) That's all :)

I am Varun Kashyap from India. I am passionate about Computers, Programming, Internet and the Technologies that drive them. I love programming and often I am working on projects in Java, PHP, AJAX etc.